"But what can you say to Sa.s.soon?"

"Him? Let me alone; I'll invent something--he'll never know! Bah! I shall miss a fine scene, that's all!" she added with a dramatic regret.

"Well, that's over! How much did you use?"

"Thirty-five."

"Keep the rest!"

"I'll pay."

"Bur-r--shut up! I'm not lending. Borrowing breaks up friendships. It's yours--it's given!"

She looked at the distressed girl a moment and added apprehensively:

"Winona, you're losing your grip!"

"Losing? It's gone!"

"Decidedly, I must see Blainey this afternoon and get that job for you,"

said Dore pensively. She disliked these sudden bleak apparitions and hated long to consider them. "You'll see in a few days, all will be changed--all!"

Ida returned with long-stemmed chrysanthemums towering over her brown curls, and made a second trip for some hydrangeas which she had found at Estelle Monks' below. The room had now quite the effect of a conservatory.

"Why don't you work the birthday gag?" said Winona helpfully.

"Can't! November's my month for Joe," said Dore reluctantly.

Birthdays, needless to say, are legitimate perquisites in Salamanderland, and pretty certain to occur in the first or second months of each new acquaintance.

As the three Salamanders were thoughtfully considering this possibility, three knocks like the blow of a hammer sounded on the door, and the next moment the dreaded form of Miss Pim, yclept the d.u.c.h.ess, swept, or rather bounded, in.

"Humph! and what's this folderol mean?" she said, stopping short, sniffing and folding her hands over her stomach. "Very fine! Plenty of money for cabs, perfumes, silks, hats, flowers, luxuries--"

"You certainly don't object to my having plenty of money, do you, Miss Pim?" said Dore in a caressing voice, as she went to her purse before the landlady could make the demand direct. "You seem rather anxious about my little bill, I believe!"

"Little!" exclaimed Miss Pim, sitting down with the motion of a jack-knife shutting up.

Dore's calmness took away her breath, but a certain joy showed itself eagerly over her spectacled nose. She understood that such impudence meant pay. Nevertheless she sat stiffly and suspiciously, ready to pounce upon the slightest evasion.

Miss Pim's face advanced in three divisions--forehead, keen nose and sharpened chin. She wore a high false front, of a warmer brown than the slightly grizzled hair that she piled _en turban_ on her head, a majestic note which had earned her the sobriquet of "the d.u.c.h.ess." She adhered to the toilets of the late seventies--flowing brown shotted silks, heavy medallions, hair bracelets, and on state occasions appeared in baby pinks, as if denying the pa.s.sage of years. She had had a tragic romance--one only, for her nature was too determined to risk another, and at the age of fifty-four she still showed herself implacable to the male s.e.x, although not unwilling to let it be known that she could choose one of three any day she selected. She carried a hand-bag, which jingled with the warning note of silver dollars. She was horribly avaricious, and the Salamanders who courted her favor paid her, whenever possible, in specie. Then she would open her bag, holding it between her knees, and drop into it, one by one, the shining round dollars, listening eagerly to the metallic shock.

"My dear Miss Pim," said Dore, returning with her pocketbook, in a tone of calm superiority that left the landlady dumfounded, "I've told you frequently that I prefer my bill monthly. These weekly rounds are exceedingly annoying. Please don't bother me again. I have nothing smaller than a hundred; can you change it?"

And flirting the fabulous bill before the eyes of the landlady, she nonchalantly let it flutter from the tips of her disdainful fingers.

Miss Pim, who liked to inspire terror, was so completely nonplused that, though her lips worked spasmodically, she found nothing to say. She took the bill furiously, and went out. A moment later Josephus appeared with the change in an envelope. The Salamanders were still in gales of laughter over the discomfiture of their common enemy.

Dodo, left alone, dressed in a simple dress of dull black, relieved by a lace edging at the throat and sleeves, and a tailor hat with the invariable splash of a red feather; for she made it a superst.i.tion never to be without a little red flutter of audacity and daring. Then she zealously applied the powder, to give a touch of ailing melancholy to her young cheeks--it would never do to appear before Mr. Peavey in too healthy a manifestation. In general, it must be noted that no Salamander is ever in perfect health. There is always lurking in the background a melancholy but most serviceable ailment that not only does for a thousand excuses, but encourages concrete evidences of masculine sympathy.

Her costume finished, she exercised her prevaricatory talents at the telephone, soothing irate admirers, who had clamored ineffectually for her the evening before, with plausible tales which, if they did not entirely believe, they ended by weakly accepting, which amounted to the same thing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Please don't bother me again."]

At noon, according to orders, Joseph Gilday, Junior, arrived with a carefully simulated hang-dog look. He was a wiry, sharp-eyed, jingling little fellow, just twenty, already imbued with the lawyer's mocking smile, on the verge of being a man of the world, eager to arrive there, but not quite emanc.i.p.ated. For the last month in this growing phase Dore had found the lines of discipline difficult to maintain. She even foresaw the time when it would be impossible. He had to be handled carefully.

"h.e.l.lo, Dodo," said Gilday in a hollow tone of misery, dragging his cane into the room and fastening humble eyes on his yellow spats.

"Good morning," said Dore frigidly, for she perceived his maneuver was to force a laugh.

"Thunderation! what is it?" said Gilday, lifting his head and perceiving for the first time the floral display on the trunk tops, the bureaus and the mantelpieces. "I say, is this your October birthday?"

"What do you mean?" said Dore blankly, shaking the water from the stems of Sa.s.soon's orchids.

"Never saw so many flowers in my born life!"

"Many?... do you think so?" said Dore with the air of a marquise.

"Ouch!" said Gilday; "I got it!... I got it!"

"I think you came here to...."

Gilday flushed; apologies were not easy for him.

"What's the use of kicking up a tempest about a little bill of fifty?"

he said sulkily. "You could take it as all the other girls do!"

"My dear Joe," said Dore, seizing her opportunity instantly, "other girls do, yes--the kind that I think you see entirely too much of. The trouble with you is, you are not man of the world enough to distinguish.

That's the trouble of letting boys play around with me; they make mistakes--"

"Come, now," he broke in furiously, for she had touched him on the raw of his vanity.

Dore stopped his exclamations with an abrupt gesture, and picking from her purse a fifty-dollar bill, held it to him between two fingers.

"Take it!"

"You don't understand."

"I understand perfectly, and I understand," she added, looking him in the whites of the eyes, "just what thoughts have been in the back of your head for the last two weeks!"

Her plain speaking left him without answer. He reddened to his ears, took the bank-note and thrust it in his pocket.

"Now I am going to say to you what I have to say many times," she said, without softening her accusing glance. "I expect to be misunderstood--often. I live independently, and as men are mostly stupid or brutal, I expect to have to set them right. I forgive always one mistake--one only. If you make a second, I cut your acquaintance! Now we'll consider the matter closed!"

Gilday gulped, suddenly enlightened, overcome with mortification, and in a sudden burst of sentimentality exclaimed:

"Dodo, if you'll take me I'll marry you to-night!"

This unexpected turn, the value of which she did not overestimate, brought her a mad desire to burst out laughing. It was not the first time that she had been surprised by such sudden outbursts, and not being given to the study of psychology, had always been puzzled--with a little disdain for the superior masculine s.e.x.